stability

Hyndman, J 2015 The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the

Absence of Peace. Stability: International Journal of Security &
Development, 4(1): 14, pp.1-16, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.fa

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in

the Absence of Peace
Jennifer Hyndman*
The military conflict in Sri Lanka may be over officially, but conflict continues as a
war without sound (community informant, Mullaitivu 2013), or as war by other
means (Dahlman 2011). In the absence of peace and reconciliation, but the presence
of economic growth, development by stealth proceeds. Much has been written
about the militarisation of civilian life in Sri Lanka (Kadirgamar 2013; David 2013),
but this paper focuses specifically on how militarisation has proceeded with little
public protest or pushback. The political work accomplished by securitisation
is used to gain consent and create new space and capacity for state security
measures and militarisation.
This paper recasts the connections between security, peace, and development
in post-war Sri Lanka, drawing on fieldwork in one area that connects all of these
projects: tourism. An analysis of war tourism in Sri Lanka shows how it reproduces
threats to Sri Lankas security at the same time that it celebrates military victory
and might. Tourism encapsulates economic, security, and development agendas in
very specific ways. Tourist sites mobilise fear of potential terrorism and return
to the rule of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), if vigilance and
militarisation are not maintained. In such a context of risk, development is best
done by the military. Within this logic of securitisation, militarisation becomes a
common sense approach. How is this common sense produced? The securitisation
of development is vivid in the post-war context of Sri Lanka, inextricably tied to
neoliberal imperatives to convey a democratic, stable country that is open to and
good for business.
Introduction
Security, development, and its financing, have
all become inseparable in post-war Sri Lanka.
Despite the absence of peace and reconciliation, certain kinds of development proceed
apace, buttressed by the promise of economic
growth. Tourism is one vivid expression of
development where security issues play out
* Professor and Director, Centre for Refugee
Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada
jhyndman@yorku.ca

alongside the neoliberal norms of international financial institutions (IFIs). Both the
government and lenders want to forge the
impression of a democratic, stable country
that is open for business. And yet the recent
government of Mahinda Rajapakse has a
highly questionable human rights record,
and made little if any progress in addressing longstanding ethnonational divides that
were part and parcel of the military conflict
that ended in 2009, after more than 26 years
of violence. Sri Lanka also has low foreign

Art.14, page2 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

direct investment, high levels of debt, and is

in a poor state of public finances.1
The United Peoples Freedom Alliance
(UPFA) government, led by former President
Mahinda Rajapakse, was defeated in a dramatic upset in January 2015, but until that
time enjoyed widespread popularity and
public support, especially among the Sinhala
majority in Sri Lanka. In November 2014,
President Rajapakse called an election two
years early, betting wrongly on a renewal
of his mandate after his resounding election
victory in 2010. He lost to the current president, Maithripala Sirisena, a former loyalist
and minister in Rajapaksas government until
2014, who campaigned on a platform of rooting out corruption and nepotism, and undoing constitutional reforms that concentrated
more power in the presidency (Burke 2015a).
Former President Rajapakse did more than
favour family members in key cabinet positions (his two brothers) and remove term limits on the presidency so that he could maintain
power. He also forged new economic allies,
particularly China, which became Sri Lankas
biggest lender under Rajapakses reign
(Einhorn 2015). The Rajapakse regime looked
to China in part because of its fear of being
taken to task internationally on the issue of
war crimes. They saw China as a guarantor
that they would not be taken before any UN
type of trials, explained Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka (cited in Einhorn 2015). Under
Rajapakse, Sri Lanka spent far more money
than it generated, but was able to generate
annual economic growth of more than 7 per
cent. According to Bloomberg Business, the
countrys benchmark stock index jumped 23
per cent last year (Einhorn 2015). And yet Sri
Lanka has a junk rating and major budget
deficit, such that Moodys rates the economy as one notch below investment grade
(Einhorn 2015).
Loans from the international financial
institutions (IFIs) have hinged upon Sri
Lankas recent post-war rapid economic
growth, without much regard for debt levels

and large annual deficits. Demonstrating this

growth through infrastructure projects and
then casting this prosperity as under threat
(i.e. securitised) has been an effective tactic
mobilised by the Rajapakse regime to create consent to increase public spending on
the military. Likewise, political receptivity
to strict authoritarian measures across the
country was made possible by the constantly
rehearsed threat that LTTE terrorists could
return. This latter project was executed, in
part, through war tourism opportunities
that emerged in and around the conflict zone
where the final battles of the war played out
in 2009. That Mahinda Rajapakse, as former
president, held both the defense and finance
portfolios was no accident.
Sri Lankas Defence Secretary and the
Presidents younger brother, Gotabaya
Rajapakse, frequently espoused the 5Rs
of post-war development: Reconstruction,
Resettlement, Rehabilitation, and Reintegra
tion will bring about Reconciliation (de
Alwis 2014). While this may be true, only
the first and possibly the second of these
processes were achieved in Sri Lanka during the five years of post-war of Rajapakse
rule. During fieldwork and through 15 interviews in northern and eastern Sri Lanka in
February 2013, I found that rehabilitation
was no longer discussed, and that nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in the
Northern Province had been told to avoid
using the term psychosocial in any of their
programming (NGO personnel, Mullaitivu
2013). Reconstruction projects were, until
recently, most often overseen by the Minister
of Economic Development, another brother,
Basil Rajapakse.
With a view of bringing development,
security, and the neoliberal economy in Sri
Lanka into focus, I begin this paper by creating a backdrop of the macro-economic
landscape in Sri Lanka as a context within
which this analysis of development, security, and militarisation takes place. I then
move on to explore some of the links among
these various activities and the Sri Lankan

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

governments agendas. Finally, I probe tourism as a site of perceived economic recovery

and securitisation by the state in a precarious
post-war context.
Sri Lanka, Debt, and Loans

Reading current documents on the World

Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
websites regarding Sri Lanka, one would
scarcely know that a) Sri Lanka is recovering
from decades of military conflict and violent
politics; or b) that the Sri Lankan military (the
public sector) is a major actor in post-war
reconstruction and development. The World
Bank (2014) reports that Sri Lankan economy
has seen robust annual growth at an average
6.4 per cent over the course of 2003 to 2012,
with a high of 8 per cent in 2009. The IMF
(2014a) sends a similar message:
Sri Lankas macroeconomic performance in 2013 largely exceeded expectations. Real GDP growth reached 7.3
per cent, inflation declined to below
5 per cent. Steady progress on fiscal
consolidation and reduction of public
debt is a linchpin of macroeconomic
stability in Sri Lanka, and a critical
factor in maintaining policy credibility and confidence. Containing
the deficit to 5.9 per cent of GDP in
2013 was welcome, as is the commitment to further reduce the deficit to
5.2 per cent of GDP in 2014. The
current supportive monetary policy
stance appears appropriate given low
inflation and moderate private sector
credit growth.
From the lenders perspective, the text conveys a confidence that Sri Lankas economic
performance is acceptable. And yet, looking beyond significant annual deficits, the
Governments accumulated debt (domestic
plus external) has grown or remained steady
from 20112013 at almost 80 per cent of
GDP, not an insignificant financial burden.
The IMF report does point to the need for

Art.14, page3 of 16

greater revenues to be raised through the

elimination of tax breaks and loopholes.
Without the promise of relatively high
growth rates, which are projected to continue,
and increasing exports, Sri Lanka would be in
an even more vulnerable economic situation.
In the eyes of these IFIs, high growth rates
and rising exports appear to offset Sri Lankas
sizeable debt and World Bank loans. In fact,
World Bank lending to Sri Lanka in 2014 was
forecast to be more than 2.5 times greater
than in 2013 (i.e. US$564m in 2014 versus
US$200m in 2013) (Sunday Times 2013a). In
2013, the IMF lent Sri Lanka US$2.6b, with a
minimum repayment of US$500m in interest and capital for the year (Sunday Times
2013a).2 Sri Lankas financial status is precarious, even if its ability to repay loans appears
possible in the short-term.
On 23 July 2014, the Executive Board of
the IMF concluded its consultation with, and
monitoring of, Sri Lanka, and endorsed the
staff appraisal (2014a) written earlier that
year without a meeting. Yet, a close reading
of this Executive Board document (2014b)
captures a tension and is revealing:
Capacity in expenditure and commitment control has increased, enhancing the governments ability to
curtail spending to meet fiscal objectives. However, given sizeable investment needs, the staff was of the view
that spending cuts may have reached
their effective limit, and that the burden of adjustment needed to fall
more squarely on increasing revenue.
Particularly if Sri Lanka is to maintain
current growth momentum and foster
economic development and diversification, high and sustained levels of public
spending on infrastructure and human
capital will be essential (authors
emphasis added).
This excerpt tacitly endorses Sri Lankas high
levels of public spending on infrastructure
and human capital, which includes sizeable

Art.14, page4 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Public Finances (as per cent of GDP)

2011

Revenue

2012

Preliminary

Projected

2013

2014

14.3

13.0

12.2

13.1

0.2

0.2

0.2

0.3

Expenditure

21.4

19.7

18.3

18.7

Central Government Balance

- 6.9

- 6.5

- 5.9

- 5.2

Central Government Domestic Financing

3.5

2.7

4.6

1.8

Government Debt (domestic and external)

78.5

79.2

78.3

76.8

Grants

Table 1: Sri Lankas Public Finances (20112014). Source: IMF 2014b.

military expenditures, an unusual allowance
for any recipient of IMF loans. This is all the
more mysterious when the countrys debt
load is high and public spending exceeds revenues by almost 50 per cent in all years for
which data are provided (see Table 1 above).
The discrepancy between public spending
and government revenues remains relatively
constant over the 4-year period.
In October 2013, more than four years
after the end of the military conflict with
the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Government raised
military spending to a record US$1.95billion,
with the expense of both military and police
budgets combined accounting for almost 12
per cent of government spending (Agence
France Presse 2013). Goodhand (2012)
reports that high levels of military spending have continued after the end of military
conflict, with an increase of 6.3 per cent in
2011 alone. According to the World Bank,
however, military spending as a percentage of GDP has declined slightly, from 3.6
per cent in 2009 to 2.6 per cent in 2012.
While the figures vary somewhat, it is clear
that military spending is increasing despite
the end of the war. Such military spending
appears to be tolerated as long economic
growth increases more quickly than the rate
of military expenditures. Is this an allowance for post-war countries who manage
to secure economic growth if not balanced
books? More research on this economic
front is needed, and I return to this question below.

The Sri Lankan Government uses soldiers

to do much of its development work on
reconstruction and infrastructure projects
in Sri Lankas North and East, where the war
has been waged since 1983. From running
hotels and resorts in the former battlefield
(see Figure 1) to reinventing old colonial
buildings as shopping arcades in the capital
city, soldiers are the new development workers: trusted as both economic engines and
political protection (see Figure 2; Sri Lankas
Urban Development Authority is under the
auspices of the Defense Ministry). The new
high-end shopping arcade at Independence
Square features over 90,000 square feet of
floor space of which 40,000 square feet holds
40 shops. Both this elite retail space and the
old park adjacent to it have been renovated
and lit. The parks design and surrounding
boulevards are reminiscent of the sightlines
in Haussmanns Paris during Napolean IIIs
rule. Why military personnel were needed for
this renovation remains a puzzle. The creation and renovation of resorts in the North
and shopping arcades in the countrys capital are enigmatic as development priorities
in post-war Sri Lanka.
None of the IFI documents mentioned
above broaches the subject of using military
personnel for economic and other development projects, begging the question; do they
countenance an expansion of the military
as long as the Governments broader goal is
economic expansion? And if so, how could
such an argument be persuasively made to

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Art.14, page5 of 16

Figure 1: Lagoons Edge Resort near Wadduwakal Causeway. Source: Author photo (2013).
a neoliberal financial institution that would
insist on the efficiency of the market and
competitive bids for such projects? This area
is ripe for research.
Below, I explore the work that securitisation can do in galvanizing business
(including lending) but also in producing
citizens consent and capitulation to authoritative government that militarises civilian
institutions.
Securitisation: Producing Risk to
Militarise Development in Post-War
Sri Lanka
Fear is both a legitimate emotion and a
powerful political resource. It is at once
an expression of vulnerability to political threats (real and perceived), as well as a
rationale for security measures against them.
It is produced in myriad ways, through narratives of nationalism rooted in economic marginalization, loss of territory, and anxieties

about invasions of home. The production of

such anxieties gives rise to the securitisation
of fear used to underwrite the allocation of
resources to fortify particular regions and
manage risk (Hyndman 2007). The securitisation of fear and its geopolitical uses and
abuses in the context of post-war Sri Lanka
are probed below.
Securitisation is a concept with many
progenitors and critics (Buzan, Waever, and
de Wilde 1998; Hansen 2000; Bigo 2002;
Williams 2003; Ciuta 2009). It was introduced by the Copenhagen School of Critical
Security Studies, and analyses how a political or social problem becomes read through
a security prism (Campesi 2011: 2). It is a
process of social construction that moves an
area of regular politics into the area of security by employing a discursive rhetoric of
emergency, threat, and danger aimed at justifying the adoption of extraordinary measures (Campesi 2011: 2). Three main elements

Art.14, page6 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Figure 2: Arcade at Independence Square in Colombo. Source: Colombo Gazette (2014).

are associated with securitisation (Buzan et
al. 1998): an entity, such as a government or
sovereign, makes the securitizing statement
or assertion of threat; a referent object, normally the people or place being threatened
and needing protection; and an audience,
who are the target of securitisation act who
must be persuaded to accept the issue or
security threat as genuine.
Analysing securitisation in the context of
immigration and asylum, Huysmans argues
that:
the pursuit of freedom from existential threats institutes political communities of insecurity. It is a peculiar
process of constituting a political community of the established that seeks to
secure unity and identity by instituting
existential insecurity (2006: 47).
Huysmans is concerned with the audience
identified by Buzan et al. (1998), and the
political process of how insecurity is produced and then defended against, even if the

threat is only a potential one. This politics of

potentiality is of interest in the Sri Lankan
context: the risk of rebel return and terrorist Tigers.
Aradau and Van Munster (2008: 23) examine how decision-makers and those who govern try to tame the future in a post-9/11
context of extreme uncertainty: catastrophe
has become once more the dominant political imaginary of the future. September 11,
2001 is a highly Amero-centric marker of such
potential catastrophe, but the authors point
is an important one: how does one govern
through risk? Their Foucauldian approach:
focuses on how presumably incalculable catastrophic risks such as
terrorism are governed. Rather than
ideological attempts to feign control, as intimated by [Ulrich] Beck,
different policies such as war, surveillance, injunctions to integration
and drastic policies against antisocial
behavior in fact function with a dispositif of precautionary risk (24).

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

It is the precautionary part that has given

rise to new rationalities of government that
require that the catastrophic prospects of
the future be tamed and managed (Aradau
and Van Munster 2008: 24). The authors consider this a neoliberal rationality that at once
depoliticises policies and interventions and
de-democratises them.
The securitisation of prosperity and of
civilian life in post-war Sri Lanka affects
development in myriad ways. Just as humanitarian aid can be diverted for conflict-related
purposed during war (Culbert 2005), so too
is there a risk that resources for social and
economic development can be used in ways
that control and offer no benefit to citizens.
The international financial institutions
wield more power than the Government
of Sri Lanka would like to admit, and yet
the Rajapakse regime performed a strong
state persona in relation to its citizenry.
The Rajapakse government was politically
popular and autocratic, but economically
precarious. As outlined above, evidence of
economic growth, a curb on spending, and
new revenue generation was key to keeping
a line of credit open with the IFIs. Sri Lanka
had to have robust growth, even if its fiscal
house was not in order, in order to appear
open for business.
Securitisation plays into this goal by creating consent in civil society to this more
centralised, consolidated state (Uyangoda
2010) and a militarised form of economic
development that prioritises infrastructure at the expense of reconciliation with
minority groups. A salient focus of critical
Sri Lankan scholarship is this emphasis and
priority given to economic development and
reconstruction in the North and East at the
expense of political change, reconciliation
however fraught and community consultation (Thaheer, Peiris, and Pahiraja 2013):
de facto military rule and various forms of government-sponsored
Sinhalisation of the Tamil-majority
region are impeding international
humanitarian efforts, reigniting a

Art.14, page7 of 16

sense of grievance among Tamils, and

weakening changes for a real political
settlement. (ICG 2012).
International Crisis Groups Senior Analyst
and Sri Lanka Project Director, Alan Keenan,
stated that [i]nstead of giving way to a process of inclusive, accountable development,
the military is increasing its economic role,
controlling land and seemingly establishing
itself as a permanent presence (ICG 2012).
Goodhand (2012) too observes the slow
pace of progress around political development (there may be no war, but there is
no peace either) in contrast to the rapid
response and pattern of new infrastructural
development projects:
reconstruction comes with a number of political strings attached. The
rapid integration of the north and
east is seen as a means of consolidating the unitary state and preventing
the reemergence of Tamil militancy.
In essence, it is viewed as a shortcut to
security or as a means of obviating the
need for a political settlement (133).
Infrastructural development, such as carpet
roads along the A9 and include the superhighways to Galle and Katunayake, occurs
arguably at the expense of political solutions
when only certain classes of Sri Lankans,
from certain regions of the country, can
partake in these luxuries. Like the shopping
arcades in Colombo, one has to separate out
pure capitalist development from contemporary understandings based on human development, and measured by the indicators that
suggest a higher quality of life for all members of a society.
Wijedasa (2012) quotes a young social
worker living in Sri Lankas Northern Province
on the topic of road development: Carpet
roads is [sic] not development for us. Road
infrastructure is welcomed by most people,
and can be flagged as evidence of development in one sense, but such infrastructure is
not neutral.

Art.14, page8 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Smooth carpet roads have replaced

the impassable potholes of the past,
and such infrastructure has become a
development priority for the Rajapaksa
government. Infrastructure, like
these roads, is the kind of development that can be used to reinforce
and reproduce a powerful Sinhala
nationalism: look at the new houses
built; look at the new roads that make
travel easier; look at the new electrical
grid. And yet, the carpet roads have a
double meaning: many injustices such
as lost land, lost family members, and
other disappearances have been swept
under these roads that are meant to
demonstrate modernity and prosperity (Hyndman and Amarasingam
2014: 564).
For people still displaced by the war, or
worse, by the new military camps that
have sprung up since the war in the Vanni
or Jaffna areas of Northern Sri Lanka, the
development that new roads represent is
overshadowed by a landscape of widespread
displacement, loss, impoverishment, and
in some cases, trauma. These roads are part
of a quotidian geopolitics of development,
targeted not at the residents of the North
and East but at the potential investors and
skeptics both local and foreign - who might
need to see to believe just how much has
changed. They serve to consolidate a unitary
state that has yet to show any plans to reconcile with alienated Tamils and Muslims.
And as one respondent to a research project
on reconciliation noted, roads allow passage
out, but they also allow the military access
to otherwise remote communities (Thakeer
et al. 2013).
So much has been said about the Sri
Lankas states politics of patriotism
(Wickramasinge 2009), patrimonial politics
(Goodhand 2012), and neo-patrimonial oligarchy (Gunasekera 2013) under the Rajapa
kse regime that these arguments need not
be rehearsed at length. The links between
development, security, and militarisation are,

however, worth exploring in more detail as a

precursor to understanding how securitisation can be both a powerful political tactic
as well as conceptual rubric for understanding power in the context of post-war reconstruction and development. In Sri Lanka,
where violence has not ceased despite the
end of military conflict and where any sense
of political inclusion for minority Tamils and
Muslims seems elusive (Thiranagama 2011),
precautionary measures are still taken in the
name of national security.
The Sri Lankan state is performative in
two ways: it performs prosperity through
its carpet roads, new shopping arcades, and
other visible markers of newfound prosperity apparent to many if not available to all,
but it also produces threats of terrorism and
a possible return to war, employing such risk
to militarise formerly civilian spaces, like universities (Kadirgamar 2013), as preventative
measures to push back against such risks.
Militarised development in this economy of
power is the best option for the Sri Lankan
Government because (tacitly) it employs
unemployed Sri Lankans, winning political
popularity, and (explicitly) because it is constantly vigilant against the potential resurgence of the LTTE. This constant rehearsal of
vigilance and concomitant rise of militarisation against a non-existent enemy is politically popular and proven as a constitutive
outside (Mouffe 1993: 2), a way of defending
the homeland against enemy forces, whether
the LTTE or the Tamil diaspora. Securitisation
logic in this context suggests that a robust
and ready military will guard newfound, if
elusive, prosperity.
Tourism in Sri Lanka and Colombia:
Open for Business
I remember hearing about my brother and
his wife taking an all-inclusive vacation in El
Salvador in the mid-2000s. The first evening
they were treated to an unexpected reception
to celebrate their arrival as the first batch of
foreign tourists to stay at their hotel on the
Pacific Coast. Human rights abuses and documented violence persisted, but this did not

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

stop tourism (or my brother). My sister-in-law

chose the village tour as their field trip on
New Years Eve, and at the first stop she and
my brother noticed a man and woman carrying guns as they got out of their vehicle to
watch local Salvadoreans decorate their town
for the celebrations. At the second stop, they
noticed that the same armed man and woman
appeared. It dawned on them that these two
were the security detail for the field trip, their
security detail. War has rarely stopped tourism; tourists and businesses adapt.
In Sri Lanka, tourism is also a site of securitisation. The end of military conflict with
Tamil Tiger terrorists, as the Government
is fond of calling the rebels, has required
militarisation of the industry to protect both
tourists and business from a possible resurgence. Tourist sites based at the bunkers of
the former LTTE leaders and around the final
battlegrounds of the conflict in Northern Sri
Lanka have featured the inferior technologies the defeated rebels used to advance their
cause. I visited many of these sites in 2013,
concerned that I was a voyeur of tragedy, but
found that most of the sites on display featured military hardware, installations, and
strategy maps complemented by new victory monuments. A postdoctoral researcher
with whom I was working also made two
separate visits in 2012 and 2013, and we analyzed our findings in a short illustrated paper
(Hyndman and Amarasingam 2014).
Yet, we also disagreed on the function that
these war artefacts play: were they reminders
of the Rajapakse governments strength and
victory over the rebels? Or did they rehearse
the ever-present threat that a resurgence of
Tiger terrorism warranted extraordinary
measures, such as an expanded military
despite the end of the war? One of the former
LTTE leaders bunkers had a sign for tourists
posted outside under the header, TERRORIST
UNDER GROUND HIDEOUT:
Under ground hide [sic] of the terrorist leader was constructed in the
guise of an ordinary house. This well
fortified hide [out] was obscured from

Art.14, page9 of 16

air observation by the thick jungle

canopy, and it has 4 stories beneath
with a well designed exit. Hide [out]
was well protected within six close
security fences with security and
surveillance elements and prudent
employment of well trained sniffer
dogs to discern any infiltration and to
monitor the movement within.
The ingenuity of the rebels was very clear to
me after a visit to the underground bunkers,
and even the signage indicates a degree of
respect for the construction and security of
the hideout. My reading of this governmentordered text is that just as the rebels were
prudent and well-prepared, the government
must arm and ready its military to prevent
any resurgence of these rebels.
As Ojeda (2013) in the context of Colombia
has shown, tourism is an everyday geopolitical
project. The Colombian context is, of course,
vastly different, but some critical lessons can
be learned. Ojeda (2013) traces the project of
Seguridad Democratica (Democratic Security)
and analyses how touristification, or the discursive production of tourist sites as safe,
was central to the conjuring of a pacified
country that is open for business. State-led
investments in tourism and its militarisation
played a constitutive role in recasting the
sociospatial order in Colombia. While tourism may seem a banal sideshow to the geopolitics of mass displacement, paramilitaries,
and drug production, Ojeda contends that
it is an expression of everyday geopolitics.
Using a feminist geopolitics framework, she
shows how these quotidian leisure practices
are inseparable from national and international politics: all involve national security
and require suitably militarised protection
again possible threats: tourism and militarisation have been enabled and maintained
by shared routes, itineraries, landscapes and
spaces, such as those of Vive Colombia (765).
In the Colombian context, Ramirez refers
to the emergence and consolidation of the
counterinsurgency narrative, and shows how
security has become the dominant paradigm

Art.14, page10 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

of democratic rule. The long-term coexistence between democracy and violence must
be scrutinised to show how militarism and
clandestine repression constitute the hidden
face of Colombia formal democracy (cited
in Ojeda 2013: 762; emphasis added). In the
same context, Roldan comments that the
existence or threat of violence [has been used]
to justify the expansion of executive powers,
the restriction of civil rights, and the suppression or demonization of dissent, while appearing to do so in defense of democracy and
political stability (cited in Ojeda 2013: 762).
Tourism may seem like a banal application
of securitisation as an exercise of political
power, but it represents an important sector
for several reasons. The optic that Colombia
is safe enough for tourism is key to investors
looking for new footholds in multinational
business, and to governments that need to
increase exports or at least export-orientated
economic activities to pay back IMF loans
and/or improve their balance of payments.
The parallels with Sri Lanka are quite
striking. Narratives of peace and security
in Colombia become saturated with the
language of terrorism, subsequently framing guerrilla groups as the main obstacle to
attaining peace in the country (Ojeda 2013:
762). In Colombia the securitisation project
has translated into the militarisation of different regions and the surveillance of citizens. Many activists, including peasants and
university professors, have been framed as
actual or potential terrorists, or their collaborators (Ojeda 2013: 762). The end of the war
in Colombia is still in process, so the politics
of securitisation are also at a different stage.
Yet the parallels are notable.
One might ask, can all people travel to the
former war zones of Colombia and Sri Lanka?
Hardly. Many people affected by war and the
insecurities of its aftermath face involuntary immobility (Lubkemann 2008). They
lack the resources or social capital to move.
The dark irony that that a model camp for
internally displaced persons, near Mullaitivu,
houses Tamil people displaced by loss of land
incurred through the construction of a new

military camp nearby is evidence of how war

continues today by other means.
In the context of Colombia, Ojeda (2013:
766) adds a comment relevant to Sri Lanka:
That those places that tourists can
finally visit again are those to which
millions of displaced people cannot
return to speaks to the multiple violences that, through the discursive
and material production of tourist
destinations an intensive process
of touristification are supposed to
have made Colombia safer.
Tourism remains an exclusive activity for
those whose socioeconomic class status
affords them a particular kind of mobility and
protection (Massey 1993; Van Hear 2014),
whose birth place and hometown within Sri
Lanka shape their feelings of safety and proclivity to move (Hyndman and de Alwis 2004),
and whose language abilities allow them to
negotiate army checkpoints, train stations in
the capital, and questions posed by inquiring
officials with ease (or not) (Jeganathan 2003).
Touring Terrorism

A few years after the end of military conflict

in 2009, tours of the defeated Tamil Tigers
war legacy, including infrastructure, equipment and facilities became possible in
Sri Lankas Northern Province, not far from
Mullikaival, where the final standoff and killing fields are located. Busloads of Sinhala
tourists from the South of Sri Lanka were
visiting the poorly signed terrorist sites, but
so too were Tamil diaspora members returning to Sri Lanka to see relatives, check on
property, and see what there was left of the
LTTE and after the tragic loss of civilian life
who died in battle in the first half of 2009.
War tourism in Sri Lanka serves to (re)produce the latent threat of rebel resurgence,
and create political consent to high levels of
militarisation that include the securitisation
of development.
Whether the Sri Lankan Government
meant to show off the LTTEs wares and

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Art.14, page11 of 16

Figure 3: Terrorist Swimming Pool. Source: Author photo (2013).

ingenuity, such as the former leader,
Prabhakharans, bunkers and swimming
pool (see Figure 3) or was securitising tourist sites by demonstrating the potential
threats posed by real LTTE weaponry and an
imagined LTTE resurgence remains an open
question. Nonetheless, the text for tourists
that accompanies the swimming pool (see
Figure 4) is at once fear-mongering and critical of the LTTEs top leadership, despite their
widely publicized deaths in 2009. The sheer
resources and resourcefulness that it took to
build this pool so far from a paved road is
rather remarkable from an engineering perspective. Touring terrorism is about much
more than just seeing the sights.
The victory monuments erected by the
Rajapakse Government are a more predictable expression of war tourism; they express
the triumphalist Sinhala nationalism of the
wars victor. The main victory monument on
the A9 at Elephant Pass is meant to symbolise a united Sri Lanka, but it is surround by

four lions a symbol associated with the

Sinhala ethnic majority (75 per cent).
The text accompanying the victory monument is more telling: the barely comprehensible inscription on the monument begins
by stating that this was the spot on which
enormous strength, force, power, and determination concentrated from four directions.
Various army divisions are to have converged
on this historical place of Elephant Pass and
liberated this long-path of brotherhood with
a magnitude of force annihilating terrorism
and eliminating social disparities. These
claims can be seen as nationalist propaganda,
and they probably are, but they are also a
reminder of terrorism that once lurked here,
and must be guarded against. Who such tourism is for and why some of the LTTE bunkers I visited in 2013 have allegedly been
destroyed remain unanswered questions.
Meanwhile, what used to be a war without reliable road access has been replaced
by new train service to Jaffna and over- night

Art.14, page12 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Figure 4: Text accompanying the swimming pool. Source: Author photo (2013).
buses plying the Colombo-Jaffna A9 route
on the smooth carpet roads, courtesy of the
Asian Development Bank, and the new trains
that test the new rails that runs parallel to it,
thanks to the Indian Government (de Alwis
2014). Next to both stand two electrical grids
running side by side on the same north-south
axis. During the war there was only one, and
it operated infrequently. Infrastructural development abounds, and even consumers have
more options than before.
According to the Rajapakse government, terrorism has been defeated; progress has come
to the Vanni. It is open to tourism and business. President Rajapakses edict that skeptics
should come see for themselves is fascinating
in this respect: come and see the reconstruction and new infrastructure, new homes, and
roads. This echoes the Colombia case where
Uribes campaign of silence and impunity
promulgated the idea that it is time to look
to the future, not the past (cited in Ojeda
2013: 767). Like Rajapakse, former President

Uribe gave [some] Colombians their roads

back. The massive internal displacement of
upwards of 5 million people within Colombia
is not mentioned; it is tangential to tourism.
As Ojeda echoes, politics is ultimately about
whose life to protect. In Sri Lanka, ongoing
displacement among Muslims and Tamils in
the North, East, and West, as well as expanding militarisation especially in the former
conflict zones are harder to spot.
As scholars like Huysmans (2006) and
Mountz (2010) have concluded, crises such
as invasions and terrorism create new political space for exceptional measures by us
against them on the part of the sovereign.
Such measures may not always be lawful, but
they are authorised in response to the threat
of terrorisms return, as ways of managing
precautionary risk (Aradau and Van Munster
2008). Despite the end of military conflict in
2009, the installation of new military camps in
Northern Sri Lanka and the increase in troop
numbers is deemed a necessary precaution.

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

The Rajapakse government was highly

performative in these post-war moments,
constantly reproducing fear through representations of future risk. Just as [n]umbers
and facts are less important than the force
of images of suffering and fear that have
been brought to us (Wickramasinghe 2009:
1052), numbers and facts are less important
than the constant production and re-production of this fear, through threats of a return
to terrorism, insecurity, and uncertainty. All
this takes place through a discourse of securitisation laced through development, security, and infrastructure projects:
We have removed the word minorities
from our vocabulary three years ago.
No longer are the[re] Tamils, Muslims,
Burghers, Malays and any other minorities. There are only two peoples in the
country. One is the people who love
this country. The other comprise the
small groups that have no love for the
land of their birth (President Rajapakse
cited in Wickremasinghe 2009: 1046).
You are either with us or against us, a dictum made notorious by George W. Bush on
the even of the invasion of Iraq. A more constructive patriotism and critical loyalty were
not options under the reign of the Rajapakse
regime. Social and political inclusive of ethnonational minorities, specifically Tamils and
Muslims, remained elusive. The military conflict may have ended, but there was, and is,
no peace or reconciliation on which to build
trust across the fissures of Sri Lankan society.
In an effort to instill fear and legitimise its
discipline of the population, and to reduce
political space for civil society, it militarised
universities when a) the war is technically
over; and b) there is an impetus to reduce
public spending by the financial patron
saints, the IFIs.
Without Conclusion
Does the strategy of securitisation buy favour,
or at least patience, with Sri Lankans? Does
it buy the Government time with the IMF in

Art.14, page13 of 16

terms of reducing public spending because

it must secure the country against threats
of LTTE resurgence at the same time as it
reconstructs infrastructure? These are questions that remain unanswered and will have
to be addressed in future research. The election of a new president, Maithripala Sirisena,
and the interim reappointment of a former
prime minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe, create grounds to open up new political spaces
and economic practices for development.
Said President Sirisena of his recent election,
I felt sorry for [Rajapaksa] but could not
stay anymore with a leader who had plundered the country, government and national
wealth (Burke 2015b).
Rajasingham-Senanayake (2010: 1920)
has argued that reconstruction and development in Sri Lanka must be demilitarised,
and lists how this could happen. Yet five
years after her paper came out, none of these
actions has yet to take place. As long as the
Sri Lankan government pits some segments
of society against others, as patriots and nonpatriots, and promotes sites of war tourism
that at once celebrate their [Sinhala] victory
of war and rehearse the threat of [Tamil Tiger]
terrorism, it also makes demilitarisation and
peace impossible.
The performed vulnerability of the albeit
strong state and its proclaimed need for precautionary security measures to manage rebel
risk plays nicely into a rationale for public sector military spending, funded by the IFIs.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Vijay Nagaraj,
Johanna Reynolds, Vagisha Gunasekera, and
Malathi de Alwis for their helpful comments
on earlier drafts. Any errors or omissions are
mine alone.
Author's Note
This paper is part of a Special Collection of
papers on Conflict, Transition and Development emerging from a Symposium convened
by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), Sri
Lanka, and the Secure Livelihoods Research
Consortium (SLRC) in September 2014.

Art.14, page14 of 16

Hyndman: The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace

Notes
1 Reuters (2015) reported that Sri Lanka
has low governance standards, as measured by the World Bank (the BB rating):
The country ranks far below its BB-range
peers on political stability in the World
Banks Worldwide Governance Indicators,
placing it in the 26th percentile versus a
BB median of 41st; on accountability, Sri
Lanka is in the 29th percentile versus the
peer median of 45th.
2 The United States hold 75 per cent of Sri
Lankas rupee denominated debt and 40
per cent of its foreign currency denominated debt, making the US one of the single largest investors in the government
securities market. Of US$3.5b foreign
currency debt, US holds US$1.4b (Sunday
Times 2013b).
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How to cite this article: Hyndman, J 2015 The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the
Absence of Peace. Stability: International Journal of Security & Development, 4(1): 14, pp.1-16, DOI:
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Published: 17 March 2015
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